Civic Engagement

Portrait of William Henry Hastie
William Henry Hastie, nominated by the President for Federal Judge, 1944. Photographer Unknown, cover of CRISIS Magazine, NAACP. Beck Cultural Exchange Center. Full Record.

With Emancipation and the ability to participate in a democratic society, African Americans put themselves forward for public service in a wide range of local and state offices in the late nineteenth century before the imposition of “Jim Crow” laws limited their ability to hold public positions by the late 1880s and early 1890s.

African Americans served as county and city commissioners, as mayors, as state legislators, and held some federal positions for a generation after the end of the Civil War.  One representative example is the career of Samuel A. McElwee of Haywood County.  McElwee, who was born into slavery, sought a better life after freedom. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio before enrolling in Fisk University in Nashville in 1878. By the time McElwee graduated from Fisk in 1883, he was serving as a representative for Haywood County in the Tennessee House of Representatives, a position he kept until 1888. McElwee received his law degree from Central Tennessee College in 1886 and used his skills to protect African Americans from the rapidly encroaching culture of separation known as Jim Crow segregation. His story of public service was shared by such leaders as J. C. Napier in Nashville, Thomas Oscar Fuller in Memphis, Styles L. Hutchins in Chattanooga, and Cal Johnson in Knoxville.

Biographical Essay:

Sampson Wesley Keeble (1833-1887) by Linda T. Wynn

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